Activist judges are never a good thing. Judges should always strive to impartial and to not let their personal opinions or personal beliefs and biases cloud their decisions. Themis is depicted wearing a blindfold and holding a scale. She is blindfolded so that she can only judge based upon the weight of the evidence placed upon her scales. Themis is not supposed to bow before any king, politician, or god. Rich and poor, religious and atheist are all supposed to be equal before her.
It’s always a scary thing when activist judges use their power to exert their personal views upon others.
I can’t find too much on Justice Simon R. Coval, other than he practiced commercial litigation before being appointed to the BC Supreme Court. You gotta ask yourself, how does a commercial litigator get to force someone to live if they don’t want to live.
And reading his reasoning for his judgement isn’t all that awe inspiring.
More of the “I know what’s good for you” father knows best B.S..
Gotta wonder if the outcome of this matter would have been any different had it been the husband that wanted to obtain M.A.i.D and the wife tried to stop the procedure vs. the wife wanting to obtain M.A.i.D. and the husband wanting to stop the procedure.
From the article “Coval said he recognized the injunction “is a severe intrusion into (the woman’s) personal and medical autonomy.”
“I can only imagine the pain she has been experiencing and I recognize that this injunction will likely make that worse,” he said. “
So, he was cognizant of the pain this woman is enduring, and he even acknowledged that this judgement was going to make things worse for this woman. But he obviously didn’t care when it came to imposing his opinion on another person.
Simon then takes of his commercial litigator’s hat and puts on his neuroscience expert’s hat and concludes “As I’ve said, the evidence suggests (her) situation appears to be a mental health condition or illness without a link to any physical condition and it may not only be remediable, but remediable relatively quickly,” he said.
Let me tell you a little secret about mental health treatment and mental health therapy Simon. All this shit does is teaches you how to mask your fucking issues so that no one has to hear your whinging and suffering.
That’s what the pills are for.
That’s what the therapy is for.
I’m the one who came from a dysfunctional military household.
I’m the one who endured the rage and anger of an alcoholic member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I’m the one who was raised by his alcoholic grandmother that was suffering mental trauma from her time in Indian Residential School.
I’m the one who spent two years being sexually abused by his babysitter and escorted over to the base chapel to be given wine by a chaplain who would be charged with child sexual abuse.
I spent three years receiving “conversion therapy” from a military social worker that was hellbent on keeping a lid on the truth about CFB Namao.
I’m the one who had the military justice system slam the door in his face in 1977, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1990, 2011, 2018.
The Canadian Armed Forces helped my father avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services by transferring my father out of the jurisdiction of Alberta when Captain Totzke was informed about my impending apprehension.
I’m the one who spent his teenage years on Canadian Forces Base Downsview enduring the wrath of his father for having “fucked with his military career” and receiving physical abuse and mental abuse instead of receiving help with this diagnosed major depression and severe anxiety.
I’m the one who had to live with a father whose sole reason for keeping custody of the children he hated was so that he could control the costs.
I’m the one who had to live their life hating everything about themselves because that’s what was drilled into their fucking head.
And I am beyond fucking tired.
Pills don’t fucking work.
Therapy is all about telling your counsellor what they want to hear.
So I really don’t need an activist judge such as Simon R. Coval opining their personal beliefs.
I can promise you that if Coval had to walk 50 metres in my shoes he’d be a fucking babbling pile of tears begging for it to end.
I wasn’t wanted as a kid.
My parents got drunk and fucked.
That’s it.
That’s all.
My father always said that my mother tricked him into getting her pregnant so that she could trap him in the marriage.
My mother said that Richard was the one who wanted a kid, until he realized that he’d have to look after it.
I wasn’t wanted in the first place.
I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to be.
And I’m not going to let some activist judge like Justice Simon R. Coval, commercial litigator and neuroscientist deny me M.A.i.D. when M.A.i.D. finally becomes available.
If there’s one thing that the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and the Department of Justice rely heavily upon it’s the public’s willingness to believe that each and every base in Canada operated in a complete vacuum from the other bases in Canada, almost as if each base in Canada was operated independently by a franchisee.
Each and every member of the Canadian Armed Forces, whether they be in the regular forces or the reserve forces, is recruited by the Canadian Armed Forces, is vetted by the Canadian Armed Forces, is trained by the Canadian Armed Forces, and employed by the Canadian Armed Forces.
Under the military’s own “unique” justice system, especially in the days prior to 1998, these members were disciplined by the Canadian Armed Forces for service offences which were comprised of military and criminal code offences.
What this means is that in days of yore the Canadian Armed Forces were able to keep its dirty laundry out of the public eye. And when the public did catch a sneak peak of child abuse or spousal abuse on the bases, it was always easy to portray that event as being a “one off” isolated event, instead of a tell-tale sign of a larger systemic problem.
Don’t let the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence hoodwink you by spinning the lack of convictions or even the lack of charges as being an indication of the low rates of crime on the bases. The chain of command was practically designed to keep these secrets hidden with the summary investigation flaw and the three-year-time-bar flaw.
My father was a piss-tank alcoholic when he joined in 1963. He didn’t get his alcoholism under control until sometime in the mid ’80s.
Russell Williams didn’t start his raping and murdering spree after he left the Canadian Forces.
Alexander Kalichuk wasn’t sexually attracted to young girls only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces
Roger Bazin didn’t become sexually attracted to young boys only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces.
Donald Jospeh Sullivan didn’t become sexually attracted to young boys only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces.
Angus Alexander McRae didn’t molest young boys only after he left the Canadian Armed Forces.
The members of the Canadian Armed Forces that killed Shidane Arone after luring the teenager on to a base in Somalia by using food set up as a lure didn’t kill Shidane after they left the military. They were already racists and white supremacists before they joined the military.
Whatever vetting process the Canadian Armed Forces had in place obviously wasn’t up to the task of keeping the baddies out of the military.
When it comes to Russell Williams you have to remember that he agreed to plead guilty to all of the charges so long as the Ontario Crown didn’t prosecute Williams for the sizeable child porn collection that he had on a hard drive hidden in his house. Most of the underwear that he stole when he broke into the houses around Tweed belong to young girls, not women. An investigator with the Tweed police department that investigated Williams noted that the level of competency that Williams exhibited even on his “first” break and enters shows that these weren’t the first break and enters that Williams would have committed. How many bases that Williams was stationed on prior to his arrest did he commit break and enters in the military housing? You’ll have to pardon me when I don’t believe the Canadian Forces when they say that their own military police investigated and couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary on any base that Williams had been at previously.
When Lynne Harper was found murdered just off base at Royal Canadian Air Force station Clinton, the RCAF failed to mention that Alexander Kalichuk had relations with the Harper family. Lynne’s father was an officer in the RCAF at RCAF Stn Clinton. Steven Truscott’s father was an enlisted man at RCAF Stn Clinton. And Sgt. Kalichuk was also working on RCAF Stn Clinton. Kalichuk had been found driving on the country roads on the outskirts of the base offering free panties to young girls if they’d get in his car and go for a ride with him. When investigated by the local police Kalichuk told the police that he had bought the box of panties as a birthday gift for the 9 year old daughter of a coworker on the base, but that the party was cancelled and he didn’t want to simply throw the panties away. The Royal Canadian Air Force was willing to keep quiet about Kalichuk even if it meant the death of Steven Trusscott.
My own father retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1993 with a full pension. For most of his career he was a piss-tank. Most of his postings were to outrun social services.
When I met my mother again in 1990, one of the things she asked me was if my father had ever tried to touch me in a sexual manner. I gave her a very conditional no. I told her that Richard had never touched me, but I was pretty certain that had I been a girl things would have been different. Would my own father have sexually assaulted young girls on base? I can’t say no. He loved his women young. And he also viewed women as being stupid, and dumb. Basically just objects. And he was also a womanizer. Even when he was dating Sue, he was seeing other women.
Child sexual abuse on the bases was never openly talked about, but we knew. Just like child physical abuse and child neglect.
But with child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, child neglect being classed as “service offences” if they occurred on base in the military housing or anywhere else on the base proper, it would be the base military police investigating and then the commanding officer of the accused deciding if these charges would proceed to tribunal, be converted into other charges, or would simply be dismissed.
The way that Richard was with my brother and I was just something that we accepted as normal. Not every other father was like my father, but enough were that it was normal. And what was even worse was that the “nice” fathers never stopped our fathers when our fathers were raging out of control after a night of heavy drinking or when the hangovers hit hard after numerous nights of drinking.
The closest that another member ever came to involving themselves with my family was Bill Parker on CFB Downsview in the days in the aftermath of Richard’s total meltdown in the PMQ on Stanley Green Park. Bill acknowledged that he was aware of the abuse, and the drinking, and Richard’s temper. Bill even offered up a couch in his PMQ if I needed a place to stay while Richard calmed down, just like my mother and I used to in Nova Scotia. But in the end Bill defended my father by claiming that the Canadian Forces never looked after him in the aftermath of the HMCS Kootney event. “Oh Bob, I wish you had the chance to know your father before that day”.
When I got my first job working in a bowling centre that hosted children’s parties on the weekends it really blew my fucking mind to see kids running around and screaming at each other, kids begging their parents for more money to play a video game, and just in general being kids. There were no backhands being issued, there were no orders being barked. No fathers would bellow for their kids to “shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and don’t move a fucking muscle until I tell you to move”. Not a single child would leave the bowling centre with a bloody lip.
Nowadays, the Canadian Armed Forces and their cheerleaders jump all around with their pom-poms yelling Rah-Rah cheers and telling us to move-on and to simply get-over-it.
How do you get over the single most horrifying time in your life?
Especially when the Canadian Armed Forces control the narrative, control the information, control the investigations, don’t ever have to worry about pre-1998 offences, and enjoy the secrecy that the Security of Information act grants to the Canadian Armed Forces.
Just thought that I would make a post about the imaginary independence of the Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service from the Chain of Command.
The base MPs and the CFNIS along with its predecessor, the CFSIU, have never been free of the chain of command. The investigators with these agencies are at all times soldiers first and police officers second. These soldiers, just as all other soldiers, are bound by the National Defence Act to obey the lawful commands of their superiors.
And yes, there is a difference between legal and lawful. Member of the Canadian Armed Forces generally don’t have the time and the ability to consult with a legal officer to determine if a lawful command is in fact a legal command.
And this poses a massive problem for persons such as myself who have actions against the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces for abuse and neglect that we endured at the hands of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
In the spring of 1980 the military police commenced an investigation of my babysitter due to the numerous complaints of inappropriate sexual touching of other children living on the base. The investigation quickly exposed the fact that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae was running a child sexual abuse ring on the base.
There were three boys involved with escorting children over to the living quarters attached to the chapel. One of these boys was my babysitter.
You would think that the military police would have wanted to string Captain McRae up with as many charges possible. But that’s not the way that the military justice system worked then.
In May of 1980, after the base military police investigated the babysitter for molesting children, base security officer Captain David Pilling instructed CFSIU Acting Section Commander Warrant Officer Fredrick R. Cunningham to investigate Captain Father Angus McRae for having committed acts of “homosexuality” with young boys on the base. The use of the term “acts of homosexuality” indicated that the Canadian Armed Forces already viewed McRae’s victims not as victims, but as homosexuals participating in homosexual activities.
Now, this is where things become very bad for the victims of Captain McRae that were under the age of 14.
The Canadian Armed Forces could only prosecute for the crimes of Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, and Buggery so long as consent was a possibility. This fact was raised in the Court Martial Appeal Court finding of Regina vs. Corporal Donald Joseph Sullivan which was held in 1985.
Captain McRae’s commanding officer was Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, the base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao. In 2017 as a result of me asking a CFNIS investigator if they could talk with retired Brigadier General Daniel Edward Munro to find out what transpired of CFB Namao in 1980 the office of the JAG replied that due to the 3-year-time-bar that existed in 1980, no charges could ever be brought against Munro so the CFNIS declined to talk to him.
In 1980 it would have been the commanding officer of the accused that would have decided what type of investigation McRae would be subjected to and how in-depth the investigation would be.
Colonel Daniel Edward Munro along with his chain of command would have known that the Captain McRae couldn’t be subjected to a courts martial for any crime committed against a child under the age of 14. Munro and his superiors would have known that to prosecute McRae for abusing any child under the age of 14 the Morinville RCMP would have had to be called in. And this would mean that McRae would be prosecuted in the civilian justice system where the military would not have been able to place a “veil of secrecy” around the whole affair.
This is why it was either Colonel Daniel Edward Munro or his superiors that wouldn’t allow the Base MPs to contact the Morinville RCMP to deal with the babysitter. They weren’t trying to protect the babysitter. They were trying to keep this whole mess from getting out into the public eye. Once the RCMP started investigating the babysitter, and once the babysitter mentioned the other boys and that they were bringing children as young as 4 over to the chapel the military would have lost control of the whole matter
Once the CFSIU completed its investigation of Captain McRae for sexually abusing children, the charges weren’t referred to the Alberta Crown Prosecutor for review. McRae was being charged with sections of the Criminal Code of Canada that were enumerated into the National Defence Act as Service Offences. Service offences were not in the purview of the provincial crowns. The charges were instead reviewed by the commanding officer of the accused. Which again in this case was Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, the base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao.
An interesting thing about Colonel Daniel Edward Munro is that EVERY member of the regular force and the reserves located on Canadian Forces Base Namao was Munro’s subordinate. There is no requirement for an officer with the Chain of Command to follow the command structure when issuing commands to subordinate.
At work, if a manager from a department makes an unrealistic request of me or my subordinates, I can ask that manager to address my department manager. And I have the union to back me up on that. In the Canadian Forces you don’t have that ability.
In the Canadian Forces, if you don’t do as your superiors tell you to, you run the risk of being charged with insubordination. Basically you do as you’re told and you can only ignore the order you were given if someone else superior to you instructs you to ignore that order.
Members of the Canadian Forces subject to orders from and decisions by Colonel Munro included, but were not limited to:
my father
the father of the babysitter
the serving parents of the other two boys suspected of bringing kids to McRae
the serving parents of the other abused children
the investigators within the CFSIU
the investigators within the Base MPs
military social workers like Captain Lynda Tyrell and Captain Terry Totzke.
Once the Chain of Command decided that the Captain Father Angus McRae matter was going to be dealt with through the military justice system, that was it. This is not to be questioned.
When I talked to Claude Adams of Global News in 2014 about the Captain McRae sex scandal from CFB Namao, Claude assured me that if he was in the Canadian Forces and if the military didn’t want to charge McRae with abusing his children that he’d just go marching down to the city police and lay charges himself.
That’s not how this works. If Claude did that, that would have been an immediate courts martial.
Yes, the ignorance by the Canadian public of how the military works is quite alarming.
Why would the Canadian Armed Forces go through all of this just to keep the McRae matter out of the media? Wouldn’t this have shown the Canadian Public that the Canadian Armed Forces does not tolerate child sexual abuse under any circumstance?
No. That’s not the way the Canadian Forces operated, especially not during the Cold War. The Canadian Armed Forces, much like many other “western” militaries had waged a war against homosexuality as it was seen as a weakness that the Soviets could exploit via entrapment and blackmail to recruit spies.
During the period of the Captain McRae child abuse sex scandal the Government of Canada employed the “fruit machine” to weed out homosexuals. The Canadian Forces had CFAO 19-20.
So imagine the military’s reluctance to prosecute Canadian Armed Forces OFFICER Captain Father Angus McRae for sexually abusing over 25 children on Canadian Forces Base Namao in direct view of the Base MP detachment.
Imagine if the Canadian public had discovered via a public trial that McRae had inappropriate sexual relations with children on other Canadian Forces Base and Canadian Forces Stations that Captain McRae had been moved to by the Canadian Armed Forces.
Can you imagine Colonel Daniel Edward Munro’s fear of having his command ability called into question as it was his Base MPs that failed to detect Munro’s direct subordinate molesting the children of enlisted personnel on the base that Munro was ultimately responsible for the security of?
To top it off, Captain McRae had been investigated at the Royal Military College at Canadian Forces Base Kingston for “Acts of homosexuality” in 1974. It’s not like CFB Kingston and CFB Namao are separate entities. They’re both Canadian Forces Bases under the same command chain and policed by the same police force. So it’s not like anyone in the chain of command on CFB Namao could plead ignorance to Captain McRae’s previous investigation for “acts of homosexuality” in 1974?
Why wasn’t McRae tossed out of the military in 1974? Was it because the military police or the CFSIU couldn’t find enough evidence? No. It doesn’t matter what the Base MPs or the CFSIU found. McRae’s commanding officer would have had the ultimate authority to dismiss the charges that had been brought against Captain McRae.
Even in 2011, the CFNIS had the 1980 CFSIU paperwork and the 1980 courts martial transcripts in their hand, but there was no way that the Canadian Armed Forces were going to allow charges to be brought against the babysitter.
Why?
Angus McRae didn’t die until May 20th, 2011. 3-1/2 months after the start of the investigation. And this posed a massive problem for the CFNIS.
While the CFNIS would have been free to bring charges against the babysitter, the CFNIS would never have been able to charge Angus McRae for ANY service offence that he had committed while subjected to the Code of Service Discipline.
Two flaws that existed in the National Defence Act prior to December of 1998 ensure that child molesters who abused children on Canadian Armed Forces bases in Canada ensure that these abusers nor their victims will ever receive justice.
See, even though the flaws were removed, there was no legislation enacted that retroactively allowed the crown prosecutor to become involved with reviewing charges laid by the base military police or the CFSIU prior to the commanding officer of the accused conducting their Summary Investigation as required under the National Defence Act.
In 1980, after the laying of charges by the military police or the CFSIU, all charges were required to be reviewed by the commanding officer of the accused. This included not only charges of a purely military nature, but ALL criminal code charges enumerated into the National Defence Act. The commanding officer had the full authority to dismiss any and all charges, including criminal code offences.
When Bill C-25 passed in 1998 the 3-year-time-bar flaw and the summary investigation flaw were removed, but there was no language added that allowed the base military police or the CFSIU / CFNIS to bypass the language that existed prior to 1998 and to refer service offence charges to a provincial prosecutor. More alarmingly, there was no language added to either the National Defence Act or the Criminal Code of Canada that nullified the 3-year-time-bar prior to 1998.
Why is this important?
Well without a police investigation showing evidence that I was molested directly by Captain McRae it is being hinted that I have no legal claim against the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence. But don’t forget, the investigations being relied upon are investigations conducted by the police of the agency that I am claiming compensation from.
In it’s 10 year report to Parliament that was published in 2010, the Military Police Complaints Commission that allowing the military police and the CFNIS to investigate matters that may subject the DND and the CAF to civil actions is inappropriate as indicated by decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada.
These decisions are why police forces in Canada generally will not investigate matters that could be expected to lead to civil actions against the city they work for. This is why when there is a police shooting in Canada or an allegation of police brutality police from another jurisdiction are brought in to investigate. This is also why when civilian employees of a city are suspected of wrongdoing other police agencies are usually brought in to at least review and offer oversight of the investigation.
As the Military Police Complaints Commission pointed out in 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided that when a peace officer is conducting a criminal investigation, that peace officer is to answer to no-one except to the law itself. This is an outright impossibility in the Canadian Armed Forces. Every member of the Canadian Armed Forces is at ALL times subjected to the Code of Service Discipline. There are no exceptions for the base military police, the CFNIS, nor the Provost Marshal.
In fact things are far worse for the base military police and the CFNIS as the National Defence Act allows the Vice Chief of Defence Staff to offer instructions and orders to any MP or CFNIS investigation. As indicated by the Military Police Complaints Commission the Vice Chief of Defence Staff is NOT a peace officer and has no law enforcement training.
Another oddity with the structure of the military police is that the head of the military police, the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, directly reports to the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
Currently the Vice Chief of Defence Staff is a Lieutenant General. The Provost Marshal is a Brigadier General.
And I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that.
Death won’t be an option until 2027, and there’s still no indication if M.A.i.D. will be legalized for mental illnesses or not, but I am still hoping to be “allowed” to die.
Isn’t that the funniest of things?
I’m not allowed to die, but I also didn’t choose to exist.
My mother and my father got drunk one night. An exchange of DNA occurred. And 9 months later I popped out into the world.
Through my early life all sorts of people with their own agendas were making decisions about my life based upon their own ideas and interests.
And here I am at 52, burnt out and tired, and unable to make a decision about my life.
But Bobbie, I thought that if you transitioned that you would be happy and that you’d want to live?
Fuck no.
With an official delay in M.A.i.D. until 2027 I thought that I would avail myself to fixing the one thing that I had always wanted to correct all of my life but was unable to due to circumstances beyond my control.
Transitioning in and of itself is not the cure for my desire to die.
My desire to die comes from my rancid childhood.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases was hard enough under the best of circumstances.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases as a sexually abused male was an absolute fucking nightmare.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases as a sexually abused gender non-conforming male during the days of CFAO 19-20 was a fucking soul destroying experience.
Growing up on Canadian Armed Forces military bases in a dysfunctional family in the era when the military’s policy towards members with mental issues meant that the military just outright ignored these issues meant that there were none of the normal experiences that children require to grow up mentally healthy. In fact my father’s alcoholism and his out-of-control and unacknowledged PTSD meant that the experiences that I grew up with caused a shit ton of mental issues that have plagued me for my entire life.
How bad have these issues affected me?
Here’s some moulds made of my teeth by my dentist in a last ditch attempt to save what’s left of my teeth.
Yeah, I’ve worn my teeth down to absolutely nothing.
That’s ’cause I wake up in terror some nights grinding my teeth away.
I’ve had night guards before, but I usually grind through them in a few weeks.
So Bobbie, if you still want to die, why are you transitioning?
I’ve never identified with being a male at any point in my life.
And this has nothing to do with the babysitter, Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, or Master Corporal Gill.
I’ve never identified as a boy. I always thought that I was a girl.
Around age 10 or 11 I remember hoping and praying that I would wake up the next morning with breasts and all the rest.
And everyday that I didn’t wake up with the much hoped for changes, I was devastated.
And was I ever jealous.
The girls at school were starting to fill out, and I wasn’t.
So, I intend to spend the next three years-or-so getting some of the changes that I’ve always wanted.
I’m not going for bottom surgery. I’ll get some items removed, but I’m not going for vaginoplasty.
And for the topside, I’ll be happy with what the hormones give me. I’m not going the augmentation route.
Body wise? Yeah, I’m already enjoying the muscle loss. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve always felt that my body is smaller than what it actually is. By losing muscle mass I’m hoping to finally get my body muscle structure down to what feels more natural. I’m already getting some of the fat redistribution, but the full effect won’t be for another year or so.
The goal of this all will be that when I finally go to sleep and escape this fucked up existence, that I present as close to a female as I can.
Never wanted to be a male.
Never identified as a male.
I don’t want to die as a male.
But, in the meantime I’m going to keep on with the hormones and the changes.
The Canadian Armed Forces had an extensive amount of say over my childhood.
I will not allow Canadian Armed Forces to say single fucking thing about my remaining days or my death.
For the most part the media in Canada is finished.
Very lax CRTC rules, very biased free trade agreements, and extremely toothless foreign ownerships rules means that our media for the most part is American owned and always has a pro-corporate, pro-capitalism, anti-worker bias, and anti-socialist policies at play.
It doesn’t matter if the newsroom or the head office has a Canadian street address. If the board of directors and the majority of shareholders are Americans, then the product that they produce is American propaganda.
We don’t have to worry about the Americans launching an invasion to take over Canada, the invasion has been going on since the Mulroney years in the ’80s, some might even say that the invasion started with Dief – the – Thief’s policy of overt American appeasement.
This morning when I logged into the cesspool formerly known as Twitter I caught this tweet from Lynda Steele.
This would be depressing, except Lynda is one of those in the news media that practically ensured the death of local media.
When Lynda was with 980 CKNW her pro-automobile industry / anti-alternative transportation biases were on full display. But I guess that she was just playing to her audience. The only place I’ve ever seen people listen to AM radio is in the car. But Lynda should have realized that the days of AM radio are coming to an end. Even FM radio isn’t far behind.
I stopped listening to radio back in the early ’00s when Rock 101 was blitzing the airwaves with that Spence Shriek commercial.
MP3 players made portable music that much easier to obtain and they totally negated my need for a radio. More importantly I never had to listen to that insistent Spence Shriek or annoying crap like it again.
People in general don’t like biases in their news, and people are fairly decent at detecting biases.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, the previous park board and city council agreed to install a bicycle lane in Stanley Park that would separate the bicycle riders from the pedestrians on the seawall thus allowing the pedestrians on the seawall to distance themselves by spreading across the walking path and the bicycle path and allowing the bicycle riders to continue using the park.
Now, I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth about what happened at CKNW, but to hear Lynda describe it lycra clad MAMILs were dragging the disabled out of their vehicles and euthanizing them at the main entrance to the park. The elderly were no longer able to drive to the park. Traffic in the park was now forced to drive at the posted speed limit. Car drivers were now forced to sit behind the horse drawn carriage tours and left to contemplate the meaningless existence of being a horse pulling tourists around and around in a loop.
In reality, there were only three groups of people upset at the bicycle lanes.
Car drivers using the park to avoid north bound traffic jams on the Stanley Park causeway. Car drivers using the park to avoid the downtown core by rat racing through the park to get to Beach Ave thus avoiding West Georgia, Burrard, and Howe.
And the most important group of all, the tour bus operators. There is a metric shit ton of money made in fares and tips from tourists that come to town on the cruise ships and want to go see “World Famous Stanley Park”. And no doubt there is some form of benefit to the tour bus operators when they deliver fresh cattle to the two “major” tourist attractions in the park.
The bicycle lanes made it impossible for tour busses to fit back in to the park. Because park drive was meant to meander through the park it has some tight bends. With the concrete barriers running through the park it would have been impossible for a full size tour bus to navigate.
Under an outrage that was practically stoked by the media Vancouver got a populist mayor elected with support from just over 18% of eligible voters.
The first thing Qatari Ken did when elected was to jump on an airplane to go watch a soccer game in Qatar. Hence why I call him Qatari Ken.
Ken’s plan was to rip out all of the bicycle lanes in the park to allow the “disabled and elderly” park users to get back into the park. Ken got as far as tearing out the lanes expect for the eastern Beach Avenue exit. The problem that Lynda and Qatari Ken didn’t account for was the public uproar that resulted from the removal of the bicycle lanes in the park.
It never was about the “elderly and disabled”. If it were then Qatari Ken and Lynda would have been pressing for a “community shuttle bus” that would stop at all of the hospitals, senior homes, assisted living homes, and other care facilities in order to give ALL disabled persons and elderly persons the ability to visit the park, especially those without families or those without the means to travel.
No, what it was all about was Qatari Ken riding a wave of populism in to the Mayor’s office to ensure that the interests of a select few business owners were looked after.
Both Lynda and Qatari Ken had been buoyed in their anti-bicycle / anti-alternate transportation biases because of the dynamics of the echo chamber. Lynda’s audience was only car drivers basically. So when Jim-Bob-Joe called in from Abbotsford to say that he’s never coming back to Stanley Park because the City of Vancouver has gone woke with bicycles, that’s what she heard.
The truth is there’s far more daily traffic from bicycle riders and roller bladers in the park than there is from actual park using car drivers.
But, I digress.
My beef with the media comes from the fact that not one single local news media outlet has dare look into historical child sexual abuse on bases that used to be located within city limits.
Does Lynda believe that no children were ever sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Jericho in Vancouver during the days when both the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation flaw were in effect?
After report after report of the failure of the military justice system looking into sexual abuse of adults, isn’t Lynda and the rest of her cohorts curious in the slightest about the sexual abuse of children living on the same bases?
Isn’t Lynda, as a reporter, curious about the fact that children who lived on Canadian Forces Bases prior to 1998 don’t have the same rights that their civilian counterparts had?
When West End MP Hedy Fry said that she was not going to look into the matter of child sexual abuse on the Canadian Armed Forces bases in Canada because there were no bases in the West End even though I had lived in the West End since 1992, isn’t this “local news”? Isn’t it news worthy when a sitting MP says that a person can only get justice for military child sexual abuse if they live in a riding with a military base?
Is Canadian Forces Base Jericho not “local”?
Yes, fine, I get it. Lynda had no control over what stories she was allowed to cover and report on when she was at CKNW. CKNW survives on automobile advertising and its listenership is comprised of people stuck in cars. Therefore bicycles are a commie plot to steal your freedomobile away from you and force you to ride a bicycle.
Reporting on a story that would cause the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces a severe amount of negative publicity is something that corporate would have frowned upon as many of the owners are well connected and don’t want to be seen as pissing on the troops.
In the end, with the exception of just a few persons in the media, if the average “journalist” wants a paycheque they have to conduct the reporting that corporate dictates. But these “journalists” shouldn’t be surprised in the end when being a corporate puppet just means that the profession that they were a part of becomes a relic of the past.
And so far the “alternative media” is no better than the corporate media.
It should go without saying that Scott and I really weren’t close as kids.
Our family was not a family built on love.
As I’ve said before, Richard was in many ways similar to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights in the sense that he carried a grudge for historical slights and anyone even remotely involved with those historical slights was going to pay dearly.
Unlike Heathcliff though, Richard wasn’t the victim of the disdain of others. No, Richard was the architect of his own misfortunes.
Richard carried a massive grudge against his first wife and anyone or anything associated with her was going to pay a very heavy price for her “walking out” on him even though he took advantage of the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations and had his first wife thrown out of the PMQ by the military.
Richard also carried a massive grudge against his mother for her daring to be First Nations, but that’s for another posting.
My father’s buddy from 447 squadron at CFB Namao famously asked Richard “Rick, if these fucking kids are driving you nuts, why don’t you give them back to their fucking mother and let her deal with them”. Richard’s response was “As long as the kids live under my roof, I control the costs. If I sent them to live with their mother I’d have to sign my fucking paycheque over to that bitch, and that’s not going to happen”.
Going through my email interactions with Scott, there was one email in which he noted that even our stepmother Sue had told him that Richard would tell her that Richard kept us because we were good for tax time.
Richard never took us anywhere that would require a modicum of parenting or involvement. And from about 1977 until 1981, Richard had washed his hands of my brother and I by bringing his mother on base to live in the PMQ and raise us.
This is the woman that he described to social services as being “frequently cruel” to his children and that she was frequently intoxicated and refused to admit her alcoholism.
To make matters far worse was the fact that kids from dysfunctional families that were living on Canadian Forces Bases were often shunned.
The Canadian Forces at the time, and even still today, is an extremely patriarchal which meant that the fathers of the families would never been seen to be at fault. Any problem in the household on base was always seen as the fault of the woman or the fault of the children.
So yeah, to say that Scott and I didn’t have a happy childhood would be a gross understatement.
So Scott would go off on his own, and I would go off on my own.
Because of my estrangement from Richard as a child, I never really stayed close to Richard. Scott on the other hand looked up to Richard.
When we moved to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in 1983 is when Scott and I started really drifting apart even further.
At that point in time I was so emotionally disturbed that I was supposed to be institutionalized whereas Scott was desperate for friendship. I preferred being left alone, whereas Scott wanted to hang out and be friends with everyone.
This led to Scott hanging out with the wrong crowd.
And Richard, being the incompetent asshole that he was would blame Sue, Grandma, myself, and his first wife for the way Scott was turning out. Not for one minute would Richard turn around and blame himself or accept responsibility for his part in this play.
This of course would stoke a lot of animosity between my brother and I.
Scott would do the crime, and I would get the beating of my life.
I wasn’t raising Scott properly
I wasn’t looking out for Scott
Another wedge that Richard drove between my brother and I was the fact that Richard blamed me for what happened to Scott on Canadian Forces Base Namao at the hands of the babysitter and possibly Captain McRae.
When Scott stole Sue’s Pontiac Acadian, Richard laid a fucking intense beating on me in my basement bedroom of the PMQ. During this beating Richard yelled numerous times at me that Scott was turning out the way he was because I let the babysitter touch him and that if I hadn’t let the babysitter fuck Scott that Scott would be normal.
And of course Scott was becoming resentful towards me because Richard’s insistence that I was supposed to raise Scott and look after Scott meant that I was allowing Scott to get into trouble.
And I know that this was a substantial issue between Scott and I even until just recently. In fact it wasn’t until the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the Court Martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in the summer of 2020 that Scott finally began to come to terms with the fact that Richard lied about the events of 1980 and that Richard obviously knew more about 1980 than what Richard had ever let on.
In the summer of 1984, while Scott and I were spending the summer with our grandmother, Scott said something to our grandmother about the babysitter from CFB Namao. Grandma was furious, yelling at me for allowing Scott to be raped by the babysitter while I was watching.
I moved out of the PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in early 1988.
By this point in time Scott had been into juvenile detention numerous times and had grown substantially both in height and in mass. Scott’s uncontrolled anger and Richard’s unwillingness to control Scott and protect me from Scott is one of the reasons that I left. And it wasn’t just Scott that I was terrified of. He was hanging out with guys that I’m sure probably ended up becoming enforcers for biker gangs after they finished high school.
In a way I was very envious of Scott. Here I was, barely pushing 100 lbs and Scott had to be at least 160 or 170 even though he was 2 years younger than me. Not only that but Scott was towering over Richard. Richard once tried to backhand Scott, and Scott just caught his hand and scowled at Richard. That was the last time I ever saw Richard try to strike Scott. Me on the other hand, yeah Richard wasn’t afraid of me in the slightest.
In the summer of 1990 Richard got hold of me and invited me to move to Edmonton with him so that we could try to be a family again.
In preparation for the move, I moved back into PMQ 223F on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. But Scott wasn’t there. Scott had been incarcerated during my absence and was serving time at St. John’s in Uxbridge, Ontario.
By the time Scott was released, Sue and Richard had already bought a civilian house in Morinville, AB. I didn’t last too long in that house, and neither did Scott upon his release from juvie in Ontario. I think I lived in the house in Morinville for about a week before I got the boot and had to go rent my own apartment, which was no small feat at the age of 18.
One day at work I got a phone call from Richard telling me that after all he did for us as kids that I had to take Scott in until things calmed down. Scott was unceremoniously dropped off at my apartment. He ate all of my food in three days and he nearly got me evicted by fighting with the neighbours and blasting loud music. I asked Richard for help with groceries, he just laughed and said that maybe I should try hitting up our mother for groceries as he was finally done with us. Our mother ended up taking Scott out to her acreage out by Wabamum Beach.
I was introduced to my mother by my uncle Doug in the summer of 1990 just after we arrived back in Edmonton. I have no doubt that uncle Doug also introduced Scott to our mother after Scott arrived in Edmonton from Ontario after his release.
I happened to stop in to our mother’s house one weekend when she asked me if it was true what Scott said, that I had let Scott get raped numerous times by our babysitter. This was in the summer of 1991 and Scott was still framing it the way that my father had framed the events of 1978 to 1980, that I had allowed and encouraged the babysitter to molest my brother.
Between the winter of 1992 and the summer of 2012 I only saw Scott 3 or 4 times.
In the Summer of 2013 I went to go see Scott. We had some talks, but there was still an intense amount of resentment and condensation in his voice towards me. At the time Scott claimed that he hadn’t spoken to Richard or Sue for the longest time due to the suicide death of Eric Kolsteren.
On the day of my Federal Court application for Judicial Review, Scott had started texting me claiming that I had raped him along with the babysitter and that I should tell this to the judge. I did some quick sleuthing and as it turned out Richard had tracked Scott down via Sue and just the night before Scott’s outburst Richard had paid a visit to Scott and gave Scott a computer, a bunch of computer items, some camera equipment, and possibly paid for a trip to Toronto.
After that, Scott’s attitude towards me soured quite considerably. I have absolutely no doubt that Richard was pumping Scott’s head full of bullshit.
The next time that Scott would have any type of contact with me was in 2019 when he called me to let me know that Richard had died in 2017. Scott requested that if Sue ever asked how I found out Richard was dead that I wasn’t supposed to say that Scott told me.
Things again changed between Scott and myself in 2020 after the release of the Captain McRae’s court martial transcripts, and the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork. Scott began to realize that he had been lied to all of his life by Richard once my class action against the Canadian Armed Forces was initiated.
People have asked me if my brother’s death upsets me.
Not really.
I didn’t know him.
I knew him about as well as I knew my father.
I am disappointed that Scott is dead.
He didn’t live long enough to at least see official acknowledgement for no only what had happened to him on Canadian Forces Base Namao, but the fact that various members of the Canadian Armed Forces failed him such as our father Master Corporal Richard Gill, Captain Totzke, Colonel Daniel Edward Munro.
I know that Scott had been struggling with mental health issues for the longest time as when we did have email conversations early after 2012 he did say that he was seeing counsellors to try to work out his anger issues.
Drug wise, I don’t know when he started to be honest with you.
I know that he drank when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview. Back then it wasn’t uncommon, even for the Goodie-Two-Shoes brats, to drink and smoke weed on base.
When Scott came for a visit in the summer of 2021 both him and his girlfriend at the time were doing mushrooms and weed.
When Scott started doing K is something I’ll never know.
If he was doing anything harder than weed, ‘shrooms, and K is also something that I’ll never know.
If we were closer together, would I have known?
I don’t know.
I work at a hospital in Vancouver that is basically THE hospital for Canada’s poorest postal code, the DTES. Drugs can take over anyone at anytime. The number of fresh faces coming in for treatment is astounding. Everyone seems to think that they can try the hard drugs once or twice and they’ll be okay.
I haven’t quite figured out what to do with Scott’s ashes at this point in time.
Maybe I’ll get them mixed into little cement middle fingers and have one delivered to the Chief of Defence Staff, one delivered to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, one delivered CFNIS Western Region, one delivered to CFNIS Pacific Region, and one delivered to RCMP K division HQ.
Inscription would say -Fuck You – Kids from CFB Namao (human remain, do not dispose)
Well, as you should know, I started hormone therapy back in May of 2024. I really didn’t have the opportunity to do this sooner in life no matter how much I wanted to. And with 2027 coming up I figured that this was the only chance that I was ever going to have to transition.
May 2024
May 2024 was when I started. This blood test was to establish what my base hormone levels were.
June 2024
June was the first blood test after I had started taking estradiol. My testosterone levels were cut just over half. Estrogen was starting to make its presence felt.
July 2024
The July blood test showed a nice jump in estrogen levels. By this point in time I had noticed that my facial hair growth had slowed down, my skin was a lot softer, fat on my body was squishier, and I was starting to grow breasts.
August 2024
The August tests show that my estrogen levels can stand to go a little higher. Hopefully the “results are pending” for my testosterone levels indicate that my testosterone levels are so low that they’re running the samples again to make sure that they’re not misreading the results.
It’s going to take a few months for the changes to really start to set in.
I’m going to reside somewhere in between the worlds of male and female. Never wanted to be male, but won’t be 100% female either.
What kept me from transitioning earlier in life?
I would have to say wholeheartedly the environment that I spent my childhood within.
This was Canadian Armed Forces policy from 1973 until 1994.
Yes, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence will both wholeheartedly point out that I was not a member of the Canadian Forces. But my father, master corporal Richard Gill was. My social worker, Captain Terry Totzke was.
A report that was commissioned by the Canadian Armed Forces in 1996 and released in 2001 entitled “Canadian Forces Response to Spousal Abuse in Military Families” had a few interesting things to say that might explain how catastrophic CFAO 19-20 was toward me.
I have never been able to find a corresponding report on violence against children in military communities.
Military social workers were seen by many to be “company employees”. And that they were. They were officers within the chain of command. They had rank over members such as my father, plus they also had to answer to their own superiors.
Military social workers were often lacked the credentials required to be a civilian social worker, and often simply remustered from other branches of the military. This was the same for military police back in the day. You didn’t join the Canadian Forces specifically to be a military police officer or a member of the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit. You could simply transfer from another completely and totally unrelated branch of the military if you decided that you wanted to be a member of the military police.
So…….. here we have Captain Totzke, instructed by his training in the Canadian Forces that ANY sexual abnormality was an undesirable mental illness that needed to be eliminated from the Canadian Forces at any cost, and here we have me, fresh off of CFB Namao and fresh from the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal in which the military police, the CFSIU, and the base commander Colonel Daniel Edward Munro knew not only about Captain Father Angus McRae having committed “acts of homosexuality” with children on the base. But the military also knew full well about the actions of the babysitter.
No doubt the military rationalized that we were all homosexuals.
If Captain Totzke didn’t really have any type of credentials for social work, this might explain why his actions were completely baffling to my civilian social workers. Might also explain why he thought that it was completely appropriate to threaten me with arrest by the military police if I ever kissed or touched another boy on base.
As far as the military was concerned, there was no difference between us kids down at the lower age spectrum, and the 14 year old babysitter, and the 50 something chaplain. We were all guilty of committing the criminal code offence of Gross Indecency , which was the crime of two males having sex.
So yeah, it would be safe to say that the Canadian Armed Forces, CFAO 19-20, captain Terry Totzke, master corporal Richard Wayne Gill, and pretty well the entire military hierarchy enforced by the National Defence Act slammed me into the closet, and slammed the door shut.
I’m almost 100% certain that the abuse at the hands of the babysitter and McRae on CFB Namao had no effect on my gender identity nor my orientation.
I’m of the belief, and science backs this up, that gender and gender identity rely on more than just XX or XY chromosomes. There’s the timing and levels of hormones released in the foetus, there’s the mother’s exposure to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, and there’s just good ol’ variations presented by the expression of the genes.
The human foetus, just like the foetus of most mammals, is predisposed to become female.
This is why you can’t generally scan for the gender of a foetus before 10 to 11 weeks as all foetuses will appear to be female.
If the foetus has XX chromosomes its gonads will develop into ovaries, which will then start secreting minute amounts of estrogen which will allow the foetus to keep developing towards female.
If the foetus has XY chromosomes its gonads will develop into testicles, which will then start secreting minute amounts of androgens. This will halt the development of female external and internal reproductive organs, and start forming masculine reproductive organs. The brain of the foetus will undergo masculinization.
Gender identity and sexual orientation are both “hard coded” in utero.
If the brain didn’t have orientation or identity hardwired into it, human reproduction would have been almost absolutely impossible.
Nobody goes to school to learn how to have sex.
The brain is hardwired for this.
Only ignorant institutions or ignorant people would think that gender identity or sexual orientation are something that someone chooses on a whim
Well, it’s Pride Weekend here in Vancouver. My apartment sits right on the parade route which is on Beach Ave to Pacific Ave this year. Meanwhile I’m over at a nice little coffee shop on the south side of False Creek over by 2nd Ave.
As I’ve said before, the commercialization and the promotion of alcohol have always been turn-offs for me.
And then there’s the do nothing politicians like Hedy Fry that wrap themselves up in the gay pride flag for votes, but then come up with every flimsy excuse for their inability to help their constituents with governmental issues.
If that’s the one benefit of having grown up in a dysfunctional household on various Canadian Forces Bases across Canada is the fact that I learnt very young that I’m on my own and there’s literally no help coming from anyone.
In fact, I learnt very young that I’m better off just keeping my mouth shut as people in positions of authority don’t like finding out that there are problems and that these persons in position of authority are more than likely to blame me for bringing the issue to their attention as they are to actually do something about the issue. The “squeaky wheel” syndrome where instead of fixing the issue that caused the squeaky wheel, you just pump on massive amounts of grease until the squeaky wheel stops squeaking whether or not the underlying issue is fixed.
So no, I’ve never felt any benefit from the “community” or a need to “belong” to the community. Especially not a community that is extremely selective with its chosen “cause célèbre”. And not a community that is extremely protective of lame duck politicians because said politicians wrap themselves up in the pride flag and wave from a float in a parade.
Queers, gays, lesbians, trans, bi, and other people on the gender spectrum have existed since time immemorial. This need to be officially sanctioned by the local LGBTQ+ community is something relatively new.
When I first came down to Vancouver in February of 1992 to apply for a job in Burnaby, I knew that there was something different about Vancouver. When I got back to Deadmonton later that week, my mind was made up. Into the dumpster went all of my furniture, gave the keys back to the landlord, and off to Vancouver I went.
Of course I migrated towards the West End. But sadly when “queer went mainstream” the West End changed. The GLBTQ+ crowd that could, moved away. The Pride Parade at the same time went from being a massive “fuck you!” to the society in general that shat all over the queer community because the church told them to, to being a massive corporate advertising campaign for banks and booze.
And I don’t ever see this changing.
And now that the GLBTQ+ crowd has had a taste of acceptance, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep that acceptance, even if it means no longer making society feel uncomfortable about issues involving the GLBTQ+ crowd.
A trans teen goes missing from a Canadian Forces Base and no one bats an eyelash when their body is found in a river near the base.
Someone brings to light the fact that the Canadian Forces gave conversion therapy to the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse due to the assumption by military social workers that male-on-male child sexual abuse was nothing more than homosexuality. Not one single fucking person cares.
This isn’t a community. This is just an excuse to get shit faced and wear glitter in a parade.
Well, gonna head into work and get some drawings done. But before I go in, just thought that I’d say my piece about the latest news regarding the Canadian Armed Forces.
13 years ago I would have greeted the appointment of a female as the Chief of Defence Staff. But I’ve come to realize that the Chief of Defence Staff isn’t in a position to fix the issues with the Canadian Armed Forces. These issues are institutional issues that are created by how the Canadian Forces function.
Lt.-Gen. Jennie Carignan
Call me cynical, but there is no way that Ms. Carignan will be able to overcome the defects in the Canadian Armed Forces without a massive restructuring. Ms. Carignan has far too many subordinates running their own personal little fiefdoms in their own little silos to allow her to upset their decades long routes to easy retirement.
Since I had my unfortunate involvement with the defective CFNIS in March of 2011 the Canadian Forces has had 5 Chief of Defence Staff.
from Wikipedia.
In almost the same period of time there have been 9 different Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
from Wikipedia
And since 2011 we’ve had Tim Grubb, Rob Delaney, Simon Trudeau as the Provost Marshal. We’ve also had various commanders of the CFNIS such as the infamous Lt.-Col. Gilles Sansterre who was called “the incurious investigator” by the media because he didn’t want to know about the sexual abuse of young boys by the Afghan Forces on a base that was administered by the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.
And remember, the Provost Marshal is directly subordinate to the Vice Chief of Defence Staff.
Section 18 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter N-5 National Defence Act
Yep, that’s right. The Provost Marshal who is supposed to be a Peace Officer as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada is under the direct command of someone who is NOT a Peace Officer.
Section 83 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter N-5 National Defence ActSection 85 of the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter N-5 National Defence Act
So there you have an entire section of the Canadian Armed Forces that is bound by the National Defence Act to dysfunction. It’s literally hard coded into the National Defence Act.
Even if Lt.Gen Carignan wanted to get to clean up the dysfunction in the Canadian Forces Military Police Group, she’s in for a massive battle. She will never hear the truth from low ranking investigators as those investigators may be under instructions by their superiors to simply blow sunshine up Ms. Carignan’s ass.
If you were an investigator with the rank of Sergeant or Master Corporal, and you had Lt.Gen. Carignan say “come talk to me if you have any issues you’d like to talk about”, but yet your direct chain of command told you to think twice about telling the Lt. Gen. anything but “happy time fairy tales” whatcha gonna do?
Remember, in the Canadian Forces you’re not simply gonna tootle off to NDHQ in Ottawa to have a chit-chat with the Chief of Defence Staff. No, first you have to ask your chain of command for leave from your duties. This of course is going to be where you have to explain to your chain of command why you’re going to Ottawa to see the CDS.
And when you explain to your local chain of command that you think that they’re incompetent and that they interfere too much in your investigations, guess what? Please see sections 83 and 85 of the National Defence Act.
Think I’m over exaggerating?
Three retired supreme court justices have reviewed the military justice system since 2014. And all three have basically pinched their noses at the stench and given the system a hearty thumbs down.
You can’t have a proper justice system when people with parochial and political agendas can simply issue orders in relation to any investigation.
The only way in which Lt. Gen. Carignan will ever be able to reform the rot within the Canadian Armed Forces is to abolish the Canadian Forces Military Police Group and to hand over the prosecution of all offences that are not of a purely military nature to the RCMP.
As long as Section 83 and 85 of the National Defence Act exist, junior subordinates will never be free to tell the truth about the interference from their chain of command.
And as long as their chain of command is allowed to interfere, issues will go unreported and uncorrected. This will always lead the military to the situation that it finds itself in right now. Unable to clean house because of its heavily compromised police agency.
When will the federal government ever learn that the Canadian Armed Forces are incapable of operating their own police service.
The Canadian Forces Provost Marshal has absolutely no business whatsoever investigating or prosecuting for any criminal code offence.
Since my first tango with the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal and the Military Police Complaints Commission in 2013 I’ve always said that there is massive fuckery afoot within the confines of the Provost Marshal’s office.
What type of batshit insane lunacy allows for the provost marshal to determine what, if any, information will be handed over to the military police complaints commission?
Nothing more than poorly written legislation that allows the provost marshal to do so at whim.
Now, I fully understand that there will be those amongst you that will say “But Bobbie, why didn’t you tell the MPCC about the missing information”.
That’s not how it works.
That’s not how any of this works.
When a person makes a complaint about a military police investigation, the first place it goes is to the exact agency that you’ve made a complaint against.
And actually, a person such as myself can’t complain about an investigation or the outcome of an investigation. The only persons who can complain about interferance in an investigation are the investigators. But the MPCC pointed out previously that relying on the investigators themselves to make interferance complaints on their own may be impossible as the investigator themself may be completely unaware of any interference if the interference occurs high enough up the chain of command.
All a person like me can complain about is the actions of specific investigators.
If the investigation went off the rails due to “lawful” commands from up the chain of command, the last thing that the provost marshal will do is publically announce that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff or someone higher up gave instructions to the CFNIS about the investigation.
Remember, under the National Defence Act the Provost Marshal is directly subordinate to the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, and that the VCDS has the full authority under the National Defence Act to issue instructions to ANY CFNIS investigation.
The provost marshal has absolutely no interest in covering themselves with shit. So the first thing they do is they take the information in your complaint and use that to sanitze the complaint investigation. They know that you’re more than likely going to make a follow up complaint to the Military Police Complaints Commission so they take all of the information they have at hand and then package it up in a pretty little package with a pretty little bow on top.
Even gift wrapped, it’s still just shit.
And as luck would have it, the Military Police Complaints Commission has to accept whatever documents the provost marshal choses to pass along to the MPCC. During a complaint review the MPCC cannot subpoena documents, it cannot subpoena witnesses, it cannot administer oaths.
As recently as 2015 the Military Police Complaints Commission said that it really didn’t know how the Canadian Forces Military Police Group operated as it had never been given access to the orders and procedures governing the military police. And this means that the MPCC might not even know what evidence to ask for.
Globe and Mail interview with then chairman Glenn StannardFrom the interview of Glenn Stannard by Gloria Galloway
It’s not very confidence inspiring when the agency overseeing a particular agency doesn’t know how that agency is supposed to work.
When I was interviewed by the MPCC in July of 2012 I seriously felt sick to my stomach after the interview. I went for a very, very long walk and it took ever fibre in my body to keep from jumping off the Granville Bridge.
The two MPCC interviewers from Ottawa basically gave me a lecture on why they weren’t going to find any fault with the CFNIS investigation. They came to Vancouver with their minds made up already. The sad thing is, they’re retired civilian police officers who viewed the CFNIS as just being a military version of the civilian police and therefore their “brothers in blue”.
When I filed for Judicial Review in February of 2013, the CFNIS was required to forward to me a certified copy of all of the documents that the Provost Marshal had given to the MPCC in 2012.
It was fucking disturbing just how many records were missing and how many “errors” there were in the SAMPIS.
What an absolute fucking joke this was.
Basically what the Provost Marshal submitted to the MPCC was that I was a cheap two-bit conman looking to milk the Canadian Armed Forces for some easy money.
The MPCC really should have known better. But as it turns out it’s not allowed to know better.
“But Bobbie, why didn’t you introduce all off these missing documents during your hearing for Judicial Review”.
That’s the problem, you can’t.
Under the rules for MPCC Judicial Review you CANNOT introduce to the court ANY document or evidence that was not before the MPCC while they were conducting their review.
And the Chief of Defence Staff knows this.
And the Vice Chief of Defence Staff knows this.
And the Provost Marshal knows this.
The CDS, the VCDS, and the CFPM know that they can sell any bullshit story to the MPCC as the MPCC doesn’t have the power or authority to question what they’re being told.
And if the MPCC doesn’t like what it’s being told and instead wants to have an inquiry? That requires the permission of the Minister of National Defence.
Inquiries have too much potential to damage the Canadian Forces Military Police and that’s why they’re held so very infrequently. Just look at how damaging the MPCC review of the CFNIS investigation of the death of corporal Stuart Langridge was. The ass-whooping the CFNIS received from Michel Drapeau could never have happened anywhere outside of an MPCC inquiry.
“Shades of Somalia”
The military chain of command does NOT allow for independent investigations.
Yes, you’ll have the provost marshal and the Chief of Defence Staff and the Minister of National Defence tripping all over themselves to exclaim that investigators with the CFNIS are free and independent of the chain of command.
This is absolutely B.S. and they know it.
There are absolutely no exceptions to the service offence of “Insubordination” in the National Defence Act. All members of the Canadian Armed Forces are subject to being charged with having committed the service offence of “Insubordination” if they disobey the “lawful” command of a superior.
And yes, there is a significant difference between “lawful” and “legal”. Basically “legal” infers that the command does not violate any criminal code statute. “Lawful” just means that the person issuing the command has the authority to issue the command, lawful does not vouch for the legal status of the command.
Insubordination is the most serious service offence that a member of the Canadian Forces can commit. Insubordination comes with an automatic sentence of life in prison or a lesser sentence.
In between when I became ensnared with the defective military justice system in 2011 and now we’ve had the External Review conducted by Madame Marie Deschamps, a retired Supreme Court justice.
Then we had another External Review conducted by the Honourable Louise Arbor.
Both reviews basically said the exact same thing. The Canadian Forces Military Police are inept and unskilled when it comes to sexual assault investigations.
Then we had the Third Independent Review of the National Defence Act conducted by the Honourable Morris J. Fish, a retired Supreme Court justice.
While Mr. Fish makes some very powerful recommendations it would appear that Mr. Fish was shielded from the fact that the CFNIS and the Provost Marshal often overstep their jurisdictional boundaries and involve themselves with investigations involving only civilians. This runs counter to the spirit of CFPM 2120-4-0.
These reviews resulted in the Minister of National Defence instructing the military police in 2021 to hand over all sexual assault investigations to the civilian police. The investigation into my complaint against the man in the sauna was retained by the CFNIS with no explanation as to why other than that I was told by the CFNIS that the CFNIS was the only police agency able to work on historical military cases.
And before my time there was the military police fiasco in Bosnia and then subsequently the military police fiasco in Somalia which led to the elimination of the CFSIU, the creation of the Provost Marshal, and the creation of the CFNIS.
And who can forget the “CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy”.
The CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy is well worth the read, and it highlights all of the long standing flaws in the National Defence Act and how civilians are an afterthought to the military justice system and how civilians are at a substantial disadvantage when navigating the military justice system.
And as the offences that are alleged to have occurred during the CFB Gagetown Rape Controversy occurred pre-1998, even if the RCMP were to become involved with this investigation they’d have to hand it right on over to the CFNIS as these offences occurred on a defence establishment making them service offences. And as we all know, there is a 3-year-time-bar on all service offences that occurred prior to 1998. Yes, Rape was a crime that was specifically excluded from prosecution by the military tribunal system, but there was nothing stopping the military police and the CFSIU at the time from investigating this matter. In fact as this occurred on a defence establishment it would have been well within the mandate of the base military police and the CFSIU to investigate. So yes, the 3-year-time-bar would apply. And as these service offences occurred prior to 1998, the commanding officer of the accused would be required to review the charges before sending these charges to the provincial crown prosecutor. There was no mechanism in the pre-1998 National Defence Act to allow for the military police or the CFSIU to bypass the commanding officer and go straight to the provincial crown.
And as luck would have it, the Military Police Complaints Commission is not allowed to look at or review pre-1998 military police or CFSIU investigations.
So here we are again. It’s now 2024 and the CFPM, the CFMPG and the CFNIS still exist.
How many more years of dysfunctional and unaccountable military police will Canadians be willing to endure? Or is this a case of “out of sight, out of mind”?
Will the recommendations from Deschamps, Arbour, and Fish amount to anything or will the MoD, the CDS, and the VCDS slap a fresh coat of paint over the mildewy wallpaper without addressing the rot and disease underneath?
The Provost Marshal and the military police, including the CFNIS need to be scaled down. They need to have their responsibilities limited to offences of a purely military nature. Any crime of a civilian nature that occurs on a defence establishment or involves someone subjected to the Code of Service Discipline, especially if the victims are civilian, needs to be handed over without question or delay to the outside civilian authorities having jurisdiction.
Sure, you’re going to get a lot of naysaying from those involved with the Canadian Forces. But that’s only because the people making those complaints understand the need for the military to retain its own police agency in order for the military to hide secrets from the civilian world.
Many of our NATO allies currently operate with civilian police attending to civilian matters and the military police attending to purely military matters. Doing the same in Canada shouldn’t be out of the question, and its definately preferable to allowing the military to keep doing its own thing.
Beeshive 